Diary of a Dairy Goat. This blog is the diary of one goat, Baby Belle, a Nigerian Dwarf who lives on a small dairy farm in Western Washington.

Friday, December 15, 2006

The WindStorm

They always say there is going to be a big windstorm. And then a few trash can lids blow down the street and the excitement is pretty much over. Well, yesterday they said there was going to be a big windstorm, and guess what?

THERE WAS A BIG WINDSTORM.

The farmer was already grumbling because we just got the power on from not having any power for two days from the last windstorm, which wasn't a big windstorm, just an ordinary windstorm. The farmer had to carry water buckets to everybody and wasn't very happy, since it was also pouring outside.

The farmer asked Boo, "if you are so thirsty, why don't you just go outside and turn your head up?"

Boo wisely did not say anything, just waited politely for the bucket to be refilled, then drank all the water in just about one gulp so it had to be refilled again immediately.

So things were not that rosy when the day started.

After six years of power outages, the farmer finally broke down and drove to the store and bought a generator, so we knew that this time maybe they would be right about the big windstorm.

And THEY WERE. It was FIERCE.

The windstorm blew down ten BIG trees between our street and the highway, and our street is only a mile long. The power lines were down everywhere.

The farmer drove all the way into town, 14 miles, and there wasn't a stitch of electricity anywhere this side of the bridge. And there were ten trees down for every mile, and power lines in the road, and too many branches to even count. The paper says there are a million people without power. And since we are at the end of the line, we are always the last ones to get our power back on. So it will probably be several days.

And when there is no power, there is no water, because the well pump is electric.

You might think this would put the farmer in a very black mood. But you would be wrong. The farmer is very cheerful, even called the neighbors on the cell phone to chat about what a beautiful day it is today, and then mentioned, just casually in passing, how we got the very last generator in the store yesterday, about two hours before the power went out.

3 comments
:

Anonymous
said...

This from your friend, Marigold:Your Boo is quite lucky that with those Nubian ears she did not take off flying. Here we have a Nubian Boo also, and after the wind storm, she is now fondly referred to as the Boo-52 Bomber!

Well, we in the Valley were very worried about you goats. We called the farmer for assurance that you all had survived the big winds, but we couldn't get through. We are glad that you goats (and the farmer) have survived a very big storm. We just hope that it doesn't get too cold, but if it does just huddle together. Don't light any kerosene heaters in the barn and tell the farmer to use blankets not heaters until the power comes back.